


running in the shadows

by kate_button



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Christmas, Enemies to Lovers, Family Issues, Friends With Benefits, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Marijuana, Smoking, for all those warnings this is actually does end happily believe it or not, honestly just shitty family dynamics all around, mention of the aids crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:48:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21949843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kate_button/pseuds/kate_button
Summary: It’s a bad call to drive back into town and down Harrington’s street and to park his car a few houses down the block and smoke a cigarette and contemplate getting out and knocking on his door.  It’s a bad call for a lot of reasons, chiefly among them being the fact that it’s Christmas eve and Steve’s parents are hosting a party and Steve is expected to be there and be on his best behavior and having his dirty queer little secret turn up on his doorstep probably doesn’t count.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 18
Kudos: 376





	running in the shadows

It’s been a lot of years since Billy had anything but contempt for Christmas. A lot of years. He has vague memories of being excited for it as a kid, trying to go to bed early to get the sleeping over with so he could wake up in the morning and see the gifts under the tree, give his mom and dad the little things he’d made or found or scrounged for them, but that was a long time ago. Before his mom left. Before his dad started drinking and stopped loving him. 

Christmases as a teenager have been categorically fucking horrible. Barbed comments about sissy boys with earrings and long hair, endless Reagan bootlicking, laughing right along with the fuckers in the White House about all the faggots dying of AIDS. His dad is a military man, broken down to his core, angry and volatile and more hateful every year, threatened by the way the world is changing and endlessly disappointed by his too-soft queer of a son. Billy was made to endure family dinners that felt like enemy territory, surrounded by people who either didn’t know how profoundly hostile an environment they were creating or absolutely did and took great pleasure in it, was made to grit his teeth and shut his mouth and dig his fingernails into his palms to quit from lashing out and earning himself a beating as soon as the happy family farce was allowed to end right up until the year Neil backed him up against the wall and suggested he make himself scarce for the evening, save everyone the trouble. 

Billy is more than happy to oblige. 

Christmas has never been anything but lies and pain and an unhealthy dose of capitalism, bad music and worse sweaters and reminders of all the shit Billy never had growing up every time he steps out of the house and sees a happy little family bundled up in their little scarves to wander around the neighborhood and look at the decorations all lit up and sparkling in the dark. 

He lights a smoke and hitches his shoulders up against the cold. It was never cold like this in California, not really. Not sting your lungs cold. Not freeze your fingers cold. Billy’s acclimating, kind of, but he’s still not dressed right for it. Not dressed right to be hanging out at the edge of a cliff overlooking an Indiana forest after dark on Christmas Eve, not a sound but the rustle of the wind in the frozen trees. Neil hadn’t told him to leave, but the implication was clear. Billy’d rather freeze at the edge of the world than sit in his house and pretend like Neil didn’t smack the shit out of him two days ago for Max’s grandparents and aunt and uncle and cousins. He feels a little bad that she’s stuck there with them, would have caved to all her pleading and brought her with him if there was any way Neil would have allowed it. 

Max is alright. Turns out honesty sometimes isn’t the worst policy. She knows all about him, who he is and what and how Neil feels about it, and he knows all about her monsters and her boyfriend and the girl she wishes were her girlfriend. They’ve got an understanding. Got each other’s backs. Part of something together with the rest of her friends and Harrington and the Chief and Byers and Harrington’s ex, building something just the two of them also. He calls her his sister and he means it. She calls him her brother and she means it too. 

It’s a bad call to drive back into town and down Harrington’s street and to park his car a few houses down the block and smoke a cigarette and contemplate getting out and knocking on his door. It’s a bad call for a lot of reasons, chiefly among them being the fact that it’s Christmas eve and Steve’s parents are hosting a party and Steve is expected to be there and be on his best behavior and having his dirty queer little secret turn up on his doorstep probably doesn’t count. He’s pretty sure Steve’s parents don’t suspect that he’s anything other than normal, but Steve is weary of risking it. Billy gets it. Steve’s dad isn’t like Billy’s, but Billy’s seen the way Steve clams up and gets defensive after he gets in some shit with him, seen the way Steve desperately seeks approval even as he gets mad at himself for it. There’s shit between them, Billy knows. Steve’s dad may not smack him around but he makes him feel small and worthless and stupid, and sometimes Billy thinks that might be worse. 

Steve doesn’t wanna be fucked up any more than Billy does, but that doesn’t stop either of them. 

It’s a bad call and Billy won’t do it, but sitting on the cooling hood of the Camaro looking out over the quarry, Billy doesn’t have anything better to do than to let his imagination get away from him, see the fantasy through to its end. Steve’s face when he opens the door because in his imagination of course it’s Steve that opens the door, Steve smiling at him like he can’t help it, looking a little relieved, pink in the cheeks from the heat in the house and the wine his parents haven’t even noticed him drinking. Steve checking over his shoulder and leaning in and pecking him on the lips, bold as hell with his parents and his grandparents and his aunts and uncles and all his parents’ friends making noise in the living room, the big open kitchen. Steve slipping outside and back to Billy’s car and Billy driving both of them away, parking somewhere quiet and curling up in the back seat, getting his hands on Steve, his mouth, getting all those little noises out of him that Steve’s always so hesitant to give him, that he makes Billy work for. Making Steve shake. Making him come. Maybe Steve calling him Billy afterward, their knees touching or Steve’s head on his shoulder or Steve’s fingers drawing little patterns on his palm, not holding hands but close enough to make his heart thud thud thud in his chest, his stomach do little cartwheels. 

He shakes his head at himself, takes one last deep drag of his cigarette before flicking it out over the edge and into the water below. Him and Steve aren’t like that. Steve’s not his boyfriend and he’s not sure he even wants him to be, but it’s Christmas and he’s alone and it’s easy to get melancholy, to miss shit he’s never had, to want things he never will with nothing but the wind and the chill in his bones to keep him company. Steve’s the closest thing he’s got other than Max to someone that actually gives a shit about him and he projects a lot of shit onto the idea of him, probably. They’ve got an agreement, the two of them, a mutually beneficial ceasefire that’s escalated to stolen moments when kids don’t need babysitting and their dads don’t need an outlet for their disappointment in the way their lives have turned out. They fuck around. They try to make sure no one dies. Billy feels better with Steve at his back. Steve feels the same. They don’t like each other except for how they kind of do, but it’s not like they’re friends. It’s not like Steve’s his. 

He doesn’t want him to be. He doesn’t think he wants him to be. 

Then again, it’s Christmas eve and he’s sitting on the hood of his car freezing his ass off thinking about him and how much better he’d like this night if he could get his hands on him, listen to him bitch, maybe get a laugh out of him if he’s lucky. Maybe he’s not as fucking detached from the whole thing as he likes to think he is. 

He takes a swig of whiskey from the flask in his pocket and lights another cigarette. His hands are fucking freezing, and he curls the fingers of his free hand up into the sleeve of his jacket, tucks it up in his armpit and hunches his shoulders. He thinks there’s a blanket or two in the trunk, keeps them there with the first aid kit and the baseball bat that have lived there ever since Steve showed him the demodog in the freezer at Jonathan’s house and he thinks about getting up and getting one, decides to finish his smoke first. He takes another sip of the whiskey, relaxes just a little as it warms his belly. He could get in the car, too. Be warmer. The stars are out, there’s not a cloud in the sky and the moon is bright and it’s pretty out here in the dark. He knows sometimes there’s monsters in these woods, that this place is full of nightmares, is a fucking _nightmare_ , but even knowing the truth he can’t help but think how beautiful it is. The big open endless sky above the trees, the moon reflecting off the water hundreds of feet below.

He wouldn’t say no if Steve asked. If Steve wanted him like that, Billy would let him. But Billy knows what he is, has always kind of known what he is, knows that he’s a queer and knows he’s no good, knows he has a tendency to break the things he cares about when he can’t push them away before they get too close. He’d say yes, if Steve asked. He’d throw himself into being Steve’s and making Steve his until there was nothing left of either of them, and he thinks Steve’s already got enough on his plate without Billy on top of it all. 

He’d say yes, though. Thinks about kissing Steve on the front porch, for fucks sake. Wants to make him laugh as much as he wants to fuck him stupid. Gets a terrified fucking twist in his gut and lump in his throat and shake in his hands every time he thinks about Steve finding himself in the shit without Billy there to have his back.

He hears the car coming up the road long before the headlights show themselves. He doesn’t bother to move, just keeps sitting on the hood and staring out at the water and smoking his cigarette. The car pulls up next him and the door opens and Billy finally glances and he’s not as surprised as he should be to see the beamer, see Steve pulling himself up out of the drivers seat, see him crunching across the frozen gravel and boosting himself up on the hood. Billy glances over at him, then looks back out at the water. 

‘How was your party?’

‘Party was shit,’ Steve says, ‘gimme a smoke.’

Billy gives him a smoke. Steve shoves his hand in Billy’s pocket and grabs his lighter and lights it up and sighs as he exhales a cloud of white breath and smoke into the night. 

‘The fuck are you doing here?’ Billy asks.

Steve shrugs. ‘Your car wasn’t in your driveway. You like to come here to brood.’

‘I’m not fucking brooding.’

Steve scoffs out a laugh and it makes Billy warm. ‘You are absolutely fucking brooding, Hargrove.’

‘You were looking for me?’

Steve shrugs again. ‘Guess so.’

‘Why?’

He sees Steve look over at him out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t turn his head, ignores the way it makes his skin prickle a little. 

‘Didn’t want to see anyone else,’ Steve says, so honest it hits Billy like a brick to the temple. 

Billy takes another drag of his smoke. He could pass the shaking in his hands off as shivering. It’s cold as fuck. ‘Huh.’

Steve drags his smoke and doesn’t stop looking at Billy. ‘Aren’t you cold?’

‘Fucking freezing,’ Billy agrees. ‘Think there are blankets in the trunk. To keep blood off the seats in the event one of us gets run through by a monster or whatever.’

‘Gimme your keys,’ Steve says, scoots himself off the hood and holds his hand out. Billy gives him his keys. 

He trusts Steve. They’ve been through a lot of shit, both of them, together and separately, know too much about a world that’s significantly more fucked up than most people will ever realize, but it takes this, this moment, dropping his car keys into Steve’s hand like it’s nothing for it to really hit Billy just how much he _trusts_ Steve. He trusts Steve to drag him out of the monsters’ den dead or alive and he trusts Steve to drive his car and he trusts Steve with his sister and he would trust Steve with himself. 

‘Fuck,’ he breathes, and his trunk creaks as Steve opens it, creaks again as he slams it shut. Steve’s shoes crunch on the gravel and then his car door opens and then it shuts again and then Steve’s back, closer than before, tucking himself right up along Billy’s side and wrapping a blanket around both of their shoulders, spreading another one over their laps.

He sighs as the warmth starts to seep into his bones. 

‘Got you something,’ Steve says, and Billy looks over at him while Steve tucks his hand in his pocket and comes back with joint, thick and perfectly rolled. ‘Merry Christmas.’

Billy raises his eyebrows. 

‘It’s good shit. Tommy’s cousin’s personal stuff, not that crap he sells Tommy. Rolled it myself.’

Billy takes the joint from Steve’s fingers, smells it, rolls it between his fingers. ‘How much this cost you?’

Steve plucks it back out of his hand. ‘It doesn’t matter and you don’t want to know,’ Steve says, tucks it between his lips and lights it with Billy’s lighter. Billy’d forgotten he even had it. Steve breathes in a big hit and holds it out to Billy, raises his eyebrows. Billy takes it. 

They smoke. With every hit Steve gets closer to him, tucking himself into his side and snaking his arm around his waist and tucking his warm hand up under Billy’s shirt to lay on the bare skin of his side. Billy leans into it, turns himself toward Steve a little and burrows as deep in the blankets and Steve’s warmth as he can get. 

‘I’m not a very good boyfriend, you know,’ Steve says out of nowhere. 

‘That why you’re single?’ Billy asks. His body is tingly and his head is all funny. Steve wasn’t lying. It’s good weed. Steve pinches his side, and it tickles. 

‘Am I?’ Steve asks, and Billy has to look at him, hot nervous anticipation fucking him up. ‘Anyway, whatever. I’m not very good. I get jealous. I get feelings, like big ones, way too fucking fast. I can be kinda clingy. I get shitty when my feelings are hurt. Like really shitty. I’m like. I’m trying, but I uh. I can be a real fucking asshole.’ 

‘Don’t I know it,’ Billy says, and Steve ducks his head, smiling. 

‘I didn’t want to see anyone else tonight,’ Steve says quietly, and Billy’s heart thuds quick in his chest. 

He swallows, puts his hand on Steve’s thigh and squeezes. ‘You’re doing alright,’ he says. ‘I kinda like it when you’re a fucking asshole, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

‘Yeah, you’re an idiot,’ Steve says, and hits the joint. ‘People think I’m the dumb one but I’m not convinced it’s not you.’

‘Fuck off,’ Billy says, and Steve looks at him and raises his eyebrows a little.

‘You don’t want that. You like me.’

‘What gave me away?’

‘Well,’ Steve says, holds the joint out and lets Billy take it, ‘the way you say my name when you fuck me, for one.’

Billy chokes on the hit he was trying to take, and Steve laughs and rubs at his back. ‘Christ, Harrington.’

Steve grins at him, and then it softens out into something that makes his stomach twist and his chest clench and his breath catch. 

‘Look, Billy, all I’m saying is that I…’ he sighs, looks out over the water and shrugs. ‘I didn’t wanna see anyone else tonight. That’s all. Doesn’t have to mean anything more than that.’

‘Okay,’ Billy says. The joint is getting dangerously short. Billy flicks it out over the edge to join the cigarette butts floating in the icy water a hundred feet below. ‘I was thinking about driving to your house earlier.’

Steve looks over at him, comfortable, wry little smile on his face. ‘I’m glad you didn’t. Like, for your sake. Those parties are the fucking worst, and you would absolutely have been invited inside. You’d’ve hated it.’

‘Woulda liked dragging you up to your room and fucking around while there was a party going on downstairs, though,’ Billy says, ‘charming the pants off your mom so I could get you alone and charm the pants off you.’ He nudges his shoulder into Steve’s. ‘I didn’t want to see anyone else tonight either. Then you turn up.’

‘Yeah?’ Steve asks.

‘Yeah,’ Billy says. 

Steve takes Billy’s hand off his knee, turns it over and laces their fingers together. Billy’s heart pounds.

‘I’m not your boyfriend,’ Billy says.

‘I’m not asking you to be.’

‘You sure?’

Steve looks at him and it warms Billy right to his bones. And then Steve says ‘I’m gonna kiss you now,’ and Billy, Billy knew he wouldn’t say no if Steve asked and Steve’s not asking except for how he kind of is.

‘Do it, then,’ he says, and so Steve does.

**Author's Note:**

> cheers to shitty families folks! i wrote this instead of subjecting myself to dinner at my dad's, and it was a much better choice. please take care of yourselves this holiday season babes, i know it's a rough time for a lot of us. 
> 
> title because idk i was listening to fleetwood mac and at this point the desire to just number my fics and skip titles entirely is so strong holy shit.
> 
> [find me on tumblr.](https://un-buttoned.tumblr.com/)


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